From letters written by Sir Kenelm Digby, May–June 1633
WHEN SHE HAD been dead almost two days I caused her face and hands to be moulded by an excellent Master, and cast in metal. Only wanness had defloured the sprightliness of her beauty but no sinking or smelling or contortion or falling of the lips appeared in her face to the very last.
We found her almost cold and stiffe; yet the blood was not so settled but that our rubbing of her face brought a little seeming colour into her pale cheeks, which Sir Anthony Van Dyck hath expressed excellently well in his picture . . . A rose lying upon the heme of the sheet, whose leaves being pulled from the stalk in the full beauty of it, and seeming to wither apace even whiles you look upon it, is a fit emblem to expresse the state her body then was in.
[This painting] is the onely constant companion I now have . . . It standeth all day over against my chaire and table, where I sit writing or reading or thinking, God knoweth, little to the purpose; and att night when I goe into my chamber I sett it close to my bed’s side and methinks I see her dead indeed; for that maketh painted colours look more pale and ghastly than they doe by daylight. I see her, and I talke to her, until I see it is but vain shadows.
Nothing can be imagined subtiler than her hair was. I have often had a handful of it in my hand and have scarce perceived I touched anything. It was many degrees softer than the softest that I ever saw.
Her hands were such a shape, colour and beauty as one would scarce believe they were natural, but made of wax and brought to pass with long and tedious corrections.
Many times she received very hard measure from others, as is often the fortune of those women who exceed others in beauty and goodness.
I have a corrosive masse of sorrow lying att my hart, which will not be worn away until it have worne me out.
I can have no intermission, but continually my fever rageth. Even whiles I am writing this to you, the minute is fled, is flown away, never to be caught again.
In a word, shee was my dearest and excellent wife that loved me incomparably.